Writing about the food, farmers, fishermen, and folk of Long Island's North Fork.

In 2017, millions of Americans paid to send off a plastic vial of saliva and have their DNA analyzed.

My dive into the gene pool began with animal testing, meaning my three-year old hound Mabel, and a question: Is there something about her breeding that accounts for her vociferous howling when anyone approaches our home?

I’ve lived with several dogs. But I’ve never known one that objected as much as she does to the arrival of strangers bearing packages. Could her breeding account for it?

The first step was to get a DNA sample from under her dewlap. The special chicken treats that usually get her to hold still were not allowed, lest the residue prove that my dog is 100 percent Rhode Island Red. Getting the swab into her mouth between cheek and gum took a strong and wily assistant.

The verdict came by email a few weeks later. The adorable puppy that the rescue organization thought was half beagle/half Lab was actually a mix of beagle, coonhound and Chow Chow, a dog once raised for food in Asia and turned up in the western part of the U.S. in 1780.

Suddenly, Mabel’s aversion to deliveries from Chinese restaurants made sense.

I know almost nothing about my own genetic background. My parents were both only children so I have no aunts, no uncles, no cousins and so few direct relatives that when my son and his fiance asked for a list of relatives to invite to their wedding, I considered adding distant relations I have never met.

We all have our idiosyncrasies, but could some of mine be explained by genetics? Was there a good reason that I had to have braces twice before the age of 18? An explanation for why one of my feet is significantly larger than the other? Perhaps an analysis of my chromosomes would hold the answers.

My son gave me a genetic test for Christmas. I produced the requisite amount of saliva for a DNA sample, sent it off to be analyzed and waited for an answer to my questions about my forebears.

Six weeks later I received an email with the results. I am 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish from my mother’s side, 49 percent British/Irish from my father, and the other 1% is Northern European — the most boring outcome possible.

The disappointing truth is that my dog’s chromosomes are a lot more interesting than mine. My maternal grandmother was born in New Orleans and I thought it possible that she was not 100 percent Ashkenazi Jewish. I was wrong.

My father’s people were poor farmers in Simpson County, Kentucky and I thought it was possible there were African relations in my mix. There are none.

It’s too bad there isn’t a Hindu version that would generate a report on all of the animals I had been in previous lives.

One surprise was my Neanderthal ancestry. Neanderthals were one of the three types of early humans and before they became extinct, they apparently mixed it up with the early humans that I descended from. Since scientists documented the markers for Neanderthal ancestry in 2010, it’s been possible to identify those markers in analyzed DNA.

I hoped that I would find an explanation for what I consider my Neanderthal habits, such as my predilection for roasting vegetables over a smoky fire and my interest in hunting for food.

There was no genetic explanation for these things, but the genome-mappers at 23andMe did find markers for two traits associated with Neanderthals; I am less likely to sneeze after eating dark chocolate and have less back hair than most people.Thank goodness those mysteries have been solved.

Did I go into this with unrealistic expectations? I spoke to Sheila McCormick, a molecular biologist whose husband gave her a gift of one of the first 23andMe tests back in 2012.

Like me, she wasn’t surprised by the results, which included the information that her eyes were blue, a fact she had been previously aware of. She described the information she got as “bland.” But she was glad her genetic data backed up ancestry and health information she already had.

I’ve had a few weeks to digest the results and talk to people who have also had their genes examined and I’m starting to feel more clear-eyed. My sister’s friend Sophia was thrilled to have confirmation of her Scottish and Irish roots. Why was I disappointed that my DNA sample revealed no connections to the people of Oceania?

Now I know for sure that I am the result of the sweeping immigration of people from different parts of Europe to the U.S. in the 19th century. Once they got to America, they pretty much stuck to their own kind until my parents met and produced me a century later.

We don’t have back hair, we don’t sneeze when we eat chocolate and our dogs­ — mutts like us — are liable to bark at strangers.

05/24/2018

Twice this spring I’ve sprayed myself with Deep Woods Off, tucked my pants into my socks and with fellow volunteers climbed into the cab of a pickup that smelled like wildlife and looked like the Recycling Center’s paper bin, to check on the Island’s bluebird population.

Last Thursday, Linda Hacker drove and Laurie Dobson, retired veterinarian Bill Zitek and I wedged into the pick-up for the brief but exciting trip to the first stand of nest boxes in Mashomack’s North Field.

As the truck pitched and yawed, I realized it was possible to get seasick on land under certain circumstances. Experienced box-checkers, the others hopped out after observing a tree swallow sitting on one of the boxes we were about to check.

In one we found a freshly built bluebird nest and in the other a partial nest lined with a few white feathers. “Enter the date and ‘TSOB,’ for tree swallow on box, and ‘PGNTS’ for partial grass nest tree swallow, since the feathers indicated a tree swallow nest,” Linda instructed me, explaining the system of codes that standardize entries in a logbook. It’s like a family Bible for Mashomack’s bluebirds, documenting generations of reproductive activity.

At the next group of nest boxes, we hit the jackpot. Ignoring my polite warning-knock on the box, the mother bluebird waited until I had the door open to depart. The elastic on the cuff of my jacket was loose, and her escape route almost went up my sleeve.

Inside the nest, five hatchlings snuggled. We counted, closed up the box and left mom to her duties.

Twenty years ago, Tom Damiani, the visitor center coordinator at Mashomack, erected seven bluebird nest boxes on the Hampshire Farms property, land that was later partially protected from development by a deal between the owners and the Peconic Land Trust. The bluebirds and tree swallows that took up residence in the boxes ate insects and berries, raised their young and returned to the nest boxes annually.

The boxes went missing last week when Tom went to check them, the land cleared by someone. It’s terrible news not just because of the loss of seven places for bluebirds to nest, but because as of the previous week, one of the boxes had five eggs ready to hatch. The box, nest and birds are gone.

The story of the fall and rise of the Eastern Bluebird is largely about housing. Named the New York State bird in 1970, during the first half of the 20th century they were nearly wiped out when imported species such as starlings took over nest sites like a hoard of well-heeled summer renters flushing out local workers. For the bluebirds, it was an existential crisis — you can’t reproduce without a place to lay your eggs.

The Mashomack nest box project is part of an initiative in the Northeast to establish and maintain trails of specially-designed boxes to encourage bluebird nests and to keep out predators. The nest box trails, organized and run by citizen scientists (a.k.a. volunteers) is responsible for the fact that the Eastern Bluebird is now thriving.

Local volunteers for the Mashomack nest box project that Tom started have been organized and deployed by Bill for 17 years. During that time, Bill documented the birth of 611 bluebirds, a 300 percent increase in the Shelter Island population.

Last fall, Bill passed the baton to Linda, who is now organizing more than 20 volunteers maintaining 61 nest boxes erected at sites around the 2,000-acre preserve and keeping records of temperature, nest status, the number of eggs and hatchlings.

On April 11, the Interior Department announced it was weakening the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1923, by saying the law would not make companies pay fines for killing birds as long as it’s by accident.

The change in interpretation of the law benefits oil companies who no longer have to pay fines for dead and maimed birds due to an oil spill, but also for a company that for example, tears down a barn full of owl’s nests to make way for a new structure, killing the birds in the process.

Laurie pointed out that even land that we thought was protected is not really protected. The acres of cedar, cherry and locust trees cut in half near Menhaden Lane on Suffolk County property and plowing over of the bluebird boxes on partially-protected Hampshire Farms property, may be actions outside the reach of law. But they are not right.

Bill suggested, half-seriously, that the county should establish a public beach with a volleyball net adjacent to the site of the Menhaden Lane tree destruction so the folks whose homes now have a view of the water could also enjoy the charms of beach volleyball and the sounds of excited children swimming.

As we bumped along the dirt road in Mashomack, I felt the familiar tickle of insect activity, and Laurie — like an orangutan grooming a friend — removed a tick from my hairline. Between the four of us, we found a few more before we emerged from the beautiful woods and grassy fields of Mashomack, where bluebirds are nesting, and the land is cherished and protected.

05/23/2018

Over 50 years ago, when John Kaasik first set eyes on Shelter Island, he was 11 years old, riding in his family’s Chevy Suburban on their way to visit a friend. After the visit, his Estonian immigrant parents, Evi and Joannes, were heading back to their West Islip home with six children in the car when the axle broke coming down the Ram Island hill. It turned out the repair would take a while, so the Kaasiks stayed.

Forever.

The large family included four daughters, Marian, Marika, Veronica and Alice, and three sons, John, Karl and Marcus. Today, every living member of the family (Alice passed away in 2016) is still here, running businesses, building houses, in our school, our library and town government. Thursday, May 24, John Kaasik and his wife Anu will be honored as the Shelter Island Lions Club’s 2018 Citizens of the Year for their 12 years of organizing, directing and producing the annual school play, a centerpiece of Island life.

John’s parents took to Shelter Island immediately, but he adapted slowly to the change from suburban West Islip to rural Shelter Island. “It took a few years,” he said. “Here it was lonely and I missed home so it was a little rough.”

At the Shelter Island School, John was cast in “The Black Cat,” by Edgar Allan Poe. It was an important experience for him, “I was just O.K. at a lot of things, but this was one thing I did that was good,” he remembered. “I got a lot of positive attention — something I carry around with me now. I can give that feeling to another kid, give them a moment to shine.”

For the generation of Kaasiks who came over in the Chevy, going to the University of Helsinki was a family tradition and one that John embraced wholeheartedly. “Living in a foreign culture is big,” he said. “Growing up in the U.S. we are so isolated from the rest of the world.”

He spent six years, from 1975 to 1982 studying and traveling around Western Europe, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. “I got a lot of education just living in those places,” he said.

On Ladies Night at a disco in Helsinki in 1981, Anu spotted John and asked him to dance. Anu had grown up on a dairy farm in Finland. Although she loved the natural world she experienced on her family’s farm, she had no intention of staying there to make a living, and was in Helsinki to see if nursing was a better fit.

When she heard John was from New York, she assumed he meant the city and wasn’t sure she wanted that sort of life. But when she came to Shelter Island, “It was an amazing place,” she said. “Nature and water are very important to me.”

In 1986 Anu and John married and together they built the house on Thomas Lane they still live in. “She was pretty good with a hammer,” John said. “That’s why I married her.”

They were self-employed, with initiatives on a number of fronts. John had a painting business and together they started a taxi business. They also run the Azalea House B&B and rent out part of their own home during the season.

Their four children, Nicholas 29, Katrina, 27, Lisa, 22, and Serina, 20, grew up bilingual, deep in the love of their large Estonian and Finnish family. Anu still speaks only Finnish to them. “Our kids were very fortunate not only to have their grandfather nearby, but also their aunts and they were showered with love,” John said.

Since his early experience in “The Black Cat,” John maintained his interest in theater, writing plays and working on theatrical projects with his brother Karl. One of John’s plays, “Murder by Mistake” was published and produced here and picked up by schools and community theatres all over the country. John and Karl’s play, “The Servant’s Last Serve” has been produced several times, including a 2016 production at All An Act Theatre in Erie, Pennsylvania.

In 2008 he helped direct the Shelter Island School’s production of “Grease,” directed “Les Misérables” the following year and has directed the school musical every year since. Anu’s skill with a hammer continued to pay off as she did whatever needed to be done to make the shows go on. Scheduling, logistics, rehearsals — Anu handled everything from playing rehearsal music to managing costumes for the entire casts of the shows.

Anyone who’s participated in one of the Shelter Island School’s spring musicals, whether in the audience or on stage, knows that each one is much more than a performance. The shows celebrate the talent and creativity of the community, with powers that many of the singers, dancers, stage hands and set-constructors (and their parents) may not have realized they possess.

“It’s so much more than the fact that he includes everyone,” Anu said. “The kids are so helpful to each other, so supportive. They pull each other up. “The teenage years are hard ones for everyone,” she added. “John goes after every one and it’s amazing how good they are during those difficult years. The cutie pies when they are small, of course, are loveable. With the older ones you just have to look and the goodness is there.”

A year ago, Anu and John’s daughter Lisa was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. Her treatment is ongoing. “Right from the beginning she talked about it and that made it easier to get through it,” Anu said. “We have tried to follow her lead. Once it happens, you just do what needs to be done and that’s it.”

It’s an ongoing crisis for their family. John said how grateful they are for the support of friends and neighbors on Shelter Island. “The beauty of this community comes through,” he said. “People pour their compassion out. It makes me love this Island more.”

John says he worries about the decline of the school-age population on the Island. “I would be very depressed if this became one of those gated communities. People go to the high school games, they go to the plays, he said. “The school is one of the pillars of culture.”

He also has some advice for grown-ups who may be contemplating an upcoming speech: “People at commencement speak of big dreamy worlds. Don’t do that. The world is so much better when you break it down to communities. Start from there. Make a little change and the world will become better.”

In John and Anu, the Shelter Island Lions club has continued its streak of naming the very best Islanders as their Citizens of the Year.

Lightning Round

Favorite place on Shelter Island?John: The causeway between Big and Little Ram. A view you never get tired of.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island?Anu: Lake Kolkonjärvi.John: Otaniemi, near Helsinki. I had my college years there.

Favorite movie?John: ‘Death Trap.’

Favorite food?Anu: Karjalanpiirakka, a savory Finnish pastry. The crust is made with rye flour and filled with rice porridge.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?Anu: Pastor Bill Grimbol. He had a big youth program at the Presbyterian Church that emphasized morality and kindness.

05/22/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO The Lones family. Jason, Ebeth and their son Wilson.

Every child is a miracle, but to parents who struggled to have a child and finally did, Mother’s Day is a reminder to take nothing for granted. Wilson Lones, son of Ebeth and Jason Lones, reminds his parents of that blessing every day.

His ninth birthday was a few weeks ago, so he knows a thing or two, and his confidence in his mother’s abilities is particularly strong. On a fishing trip with family friend Cliff Clark, Wilson caught a weakfish. When asked if he’d like it fileted so he could take it home he replied, “Naw, my mom watches a lot of Food Network.

We’ll have fish and chips tonight.”

Jason, Ebeth and Wilson moved to Shelter Island from Apex, North Carolina less than a year ago and Ebeth, who grew up in landlocked West Virginia, has no idea how to convert something with a head and fins into dinner.

Ebeth recalled her surprise when Tish Clark and Wilson came up the driveway with the fish in a bag. Ebeth asked Tish if she’d mind storing it in her freezer until she figured out what to do with it.

“It’s still there, Mommy,” said Wilson recently.

Ebeth was born Elizabeth Wilson and grew up in Clarksburg, West Virginia in a large family. Her grandfather and father were both coal miners.

Jason grew up in Canton, Ohio, and remembers one of his first jobs in a large regional bakery tending cream sticks in an industrial fryer. “The device was supposed to flip them over, and it was accurate about 90 percent of the time. My job was to carry a dowel and flip the ones the device missed. Both my parents had worked in the same factory.”

Jason and Ebeth met at Ohio Valley College in 1994. It was Ebeth who first spotted Jason, playing basketball with a bunch of guys in the gym. She soon learned he was somebody else’s boyfriend. But with only about 300 students on campus, Ebeth and Jason became best friends. Later they transferred to Harding, a Christian college in Searcy, Arkansas, where they met two young women from Shelter Island, Paige Clark and Keturah Green.

In 1995 a close friend of Ebeth’s at Harding was abducted and murdered by strangers. Ebeth, Paige and Keturah searched for her before the crime was discovered. Their harrowing experience formed a bond that has remained strong for 23 years.

The tragedy was also a catalyst for Jason and Ebeth’s friendship, which deepened into a new kind of love. “For both of us life has come quick and heavy at times from different experiences,” Jason said.

“We were all reeling from that situation and didn’t think we could stay at Harding,” said Ebeth. “We didn’t feel safe.”

Jason, Ebeth, and Paige left Harding for Canton, where they worked at various jobs until Paige suggested they all go to Shelter Island for the summer, where there would be plenty of work.

Jason worked for South Ferry as a summer hire and Ebeth at a deli on the South Fork. Jason and Ebeth went back to Ohio Valley College in the fall and returned to the Island for a second summer in 1997, during which they married.

“We came back and finished the summer,” Jason said. “Shelter Island was our first married home.”

The couple spent the next six years in Ohio where Jason worked as a paramedic and Ebeth finally completed her BA in English at Kent State. “I had my diploma framed,” she said. “I had friends tell me, ‘We know people who have been in school as long as you have. They’re called doctors.’”

In 2004, they moved to Denver where Jason got a degree in biology from Metro State and began working in data management for medical research. Ebeth worked as a clinical writer.

Ever since they married, they hoped for a child but had fertility issues. When Wilson was born in 2009, Ebeth described it as “the culmination of years of prayer and perseverance and patience and love.”Jason and Ebeth became leaders in their church in Colorado. Jason was deacon of missions, leading groups of adults on one-week trips at least once a year.

The missions were often to Honduras, where the group set up field clinics to give medical care and medication, as well as clothing and school supplies to people in underserved communities. Once Wilson was born he began to join Jason and Ebeth on the trips.

With their church they ran a hospitality house in a previously empty parsonage, temporary housing for the family of a patient getting long-term care at one of the Denver hospitals.“It was such a blessing in our lives,” Ebeth said. “We lived on the top floor and made a space on the bottom floor where they could stay for free. We would organize meals, get groceries or cook for them. We befriended all of them.”

In 2014 they decided they would like to make a commitment to become missionaries and work in Honduras for a three-to-five-year period. They embarked on a fundraising campaign, and counting on support from their church, worked for two years to raise the necessary financial support. “We thought it was working out, but the home church went in another direction,” said Ebeth. “We handled it with grace and love, but we needed a fresh start.”

Jason had been approached about a job in data management at Duke University Medical School, and had a sister living in North Carolina, so after 12 years in Colorado, the Lones relocated to Apex, North Carolina in 2016.

The two summers Jason and Ebeth spent working for “summer money” on the Island were followed by four trips back, including visits for Paige and Nick Morehead’s wedding in 2007 and their baby shower. After the summers Jason and Ebeth had spent on the Island, these trips “felt like we were coming home,” said Jason.

Nick and Paige invited them to visit last spring and began in earnest to persuade the Lones to move to the Island. “They talked about what it was like to raise a family here, to be in a class with 14 other kids, to have the advantage of public school,” Jason said. “In North Carolina, Wilson’s grade had multiple classes and every class had 30 kids in it. Being around them gave me the guts to ask Duke to let me work from here. It’s still a little expensive, and we have to be mindful of that.”

Jason also works part-time on South Ferry and Ebeth works part-time at the Shelter Island Historical Society, does freelance copy editing and runs their home.

This Mother’s Day, their first on the Island, Ebeth, Wilson and Jason plan to head to church in the morning and then brunch at the Ram’s Head, joining their friends in a Mother’s Day tradition. And a warning to the Ram’s Head kitchen – Wilson may try to order fish and chips.

Lightning round

What do you always have with you?Ebeth: Lip balmWilson: My blanket

Favorite place on Shelter Island?E: Crescent BeachW: Whales Tale, especially the hole where your ball drops into a tube.Jason: South Ferry after closing time.

When was the last time you were elated?E: We recently got good news about our friend’s health.

What exasperates you?W: When someone calls out the answer in class and I know it.

Favorite book?W+A: ‘Series of Unfortunate Events,’ by Lemony Snicket

Favorite food?E: Maria’s guacamoleW: Hotdogs

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family?E: Martin Luther KingW: Tate Foard, my friendJ: Cliff Clark

Most respected elected official?W: George Washington, because after he served, he went back to his family.

05/14/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Bliss Morehead long ago stopped wearing a fur coat around the Island, but still wears black.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on April 12, 2018

Bliss Morehead was an advertising executive, a city-loving, urban creature with a BA in English from Barnard when her fiancé Mike Zisser coaxed her onto a ferry bound for Shelter Island in 1981. She remembers asking, “Why would I want to go live on an Island?”

This is what English majors call a rhetorical question.

They bought the third house they saw, got married, started spending weekends and have been living here full-time for two decades. Bliss’s son, Nicholas Morehead, married Paige Clark and also settled here. Nick works for the South Ferry.

“He does two things I never thought he would do,” Bliss said. “He drives a big boat and he uses a chainsaw.”

Somewhere along the line Bliss’s rhetorical question was answered, but it took a while for her to go native.

She laughs (and cringes) recalling how far she has come from the urbanite who first came here. Like the time she went for a walk on Congdon Road wearing a fur coat and fitted leather gloves. The next weekend a neighbor came by the house with a glove found on the road and told Mike it had to be his wife’s because, “I don’t know anyone else who would wear a glove like this.”

She was born Bliss Rehm, in Deal, New Jersey, educated at Asbury Park High School and after graduating from college with that English degree, she knew it might not lead to high-paying work.

“Barnard did what a college should do for you,” she said. “Not make you grow up. But make you.” By the time she graduated and began working as a copywriter, she was a New York sophisticate, dressed in black and sharing an Upper West Side apartment with multiple roommates.

She landed a job writing internal ad copy at Mademoiselle where she was exposed to the world of fashion journalism and then moved into advertising, working for Young & Rubicam where she met her first husband, Gould Morehead. From there she went to Beaumont-Bennett, where she met Mike Zisser, who became her second husband years later.

Beaumont-Bennett was a small agency but the work was interesting and often challenging. Bliss had to cater to the needs of difficult clients who were used to getting what they wanted. The worst, she said, were the real estate developers. “They were the lowest of the low humanity.”

As creative director, one of her responsibilities was naming buildings for real estate developers, including “The Soundings” in Battery Park City, and “CitySpire” on the Upper East Side. “The clients were my worst nightmare and it really put a strain on my professional relationship with Mike,” she said.

The late 1970s was a complicated time for Bliss. Her children, Joanna and Nicholas were little, her marriage was rocky and she was living in New Jersey commuting three days a week to Beaumont-Bennett in the city at a time when most professional women quit working when they had children.

Then Mike’s wife died suddenly, leaving him with three children, one still at home with him in Great Neck.

“I began writing letters to Mike trying to console him,” Bliss said. “The power of words can be helpful sometimes and we became close.”

Bliss left her husband and moved into the city with her children. “It really changed my life because I saw that I could live as a single parent in New York,” she said. Later, Mike moved to the city with his son and she and Mike began to spend more time together, marrying in 1982.

Once she and Mike sold Beaumont-Bennett, Bliss decided to pursue her interest in poetry, entering the Masters of Fine Arts program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and writing and publishing work in literary journals.

Once again, Shelter Island had its influence on her. “I wrote a poem called “Too Much Green” inspired by a friend from Santa Fe who lived here for a while but couldn’t paint because she said “there’s too much green on this Island.”

Bliss and Mike made the transition from weekenders to full-time Shelter Islanders after the events of 9/11 left her fearful. “I never thought I’d feel this way,”she said. “But who wants to be looking over their shoulder?”

Bliss has been active in promoting literacy on Shelter Island, volunteering with the 2Rs4Fun program that pairs local writers with local students to improve and promote the student’s writing.

She founded the Shelter Island Poetry Project, which will celebrate April (aka Poetry Month) with readings from the work of Frank O’Hara and the poets of the New York School at the Shelter Island Library on Friday, April 13 at 7 p.m.

Her belief in the importance of poetry as a means of communication is strong. “Poetry cannot be paraphrased. It is its own living thing,” Bliss said. “When you read it, the writer’s imagination will resonate in your brain. We are imprisoned in ourselves, but you can touch someone else with a poem.”

Bliss is facing her seventh decade with gratitude for the changes Shelter Island made in her life. “I used to be one of those people who thought getting fat was your fault, getting old was your fault, but once I began coming here I took the time to really know people, to see how they live,” she said. “There is a tremendously rich life out here.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? A pen.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? If the peepers ever start, out back by the pond is my favorite spot.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? The British Museum.

When was the last time you were elated? When my granddaughter, Larkin Bliss Morehead, was born.

What exasperates you? The creeping incivility all around.

When was the last time you were afraid? When the World Trade Center came down. I was never without fear after that.

Favorite movie or book? I read all of Barbara Pym every summer.

Favorite food? Pasta.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? The Obamas.

05/11/2018

Janalyn Travis-Messer’s office is full of activity. She’s in the middle of building a house on the Island and as she bustles around her office/exhibition space for local artists, she’s keeping one eye on Nushka, her new, not quite perfectly house-trained puppy.

A guy wearing crusty work boots sticks his head in to say that over at the building site for her new house, “The slab is drying.”

Janalyn is a doer — a builder, a realtor and an organizer. “I hate going clothes shopping but in a hardware store, I’m in heaven,” she said. Her best Christmas present ever? “Nine nail guns and a bucket with layers to organize all of my ratchets.”

When she decided that Shelter Island desperately needed more housing options that didn’t involve a jumbo mortgage, she decided to pick up a hammer and a nail and do something about it. The structure she designed and built is almost ready to be occupied. Unfortunately, not all of her neighbors are happy about it.

Janalyn was born in California and grew up in Hawaii after her parents split and her mother moved the family there in 1965. Janalyn’s mother was an inspiration to her, working at a variety of jobs, including as a realtor to support her family and becoming the first female taxi medallion owner in Hawaii.

Janalyn studied theater arts at the University of Hawaii and in England. Her career in theater was long and varied, from stage productions to rock and roll. She built sets, did sound and lighting for stage and TV and was an extra in an episode of Hawaii Five-0. In 1980, Janalyn left Hawaii for New York, where she became head electrician for the Broadway show “Death Trap.”

Since her first job in a drug store at 16, Janalyn has worked. In addition to her work in the theater, she’s done fabric design, house design, sold advertising for this newspaper and now works in real estate and building homes.

Her general contracting company, DJTM, works with prefabricated homes that are built to her layout and specifications and then shipped to their new address with the plumbing and electrical systems in place. She’s got a fifth one under way now, and the one that is almost completed on Shelter Island will be her third such home on the Island.

Although Janalyn hasn’t lived full-time in Hawaii since 1980, her connections there still bring her back a couple of times a year, connections that include a house and a “Hawaii dog” named Rex, both under the care of friends.

“Hawaii is a fabulous place to live,” she said. “You can go hiking every day, take your dogs to the beach every day, drive legally barefoot, but if you have to get a job, it’s not easy.”

Working in New York and living on Long Island, Janalyn met Jim Messer at a bar in Bellmore when she got to talking with a matchmaking bartender who sized her up as perfect for Jim, a regular. The wingman/barkeep made the introductions and within weeks Jim and Janalyn were a couple. They married in 1983.

A long-time Long Island native, Shelter Island had long been in Jim’s sights, but it was Janalyn who grabbed the real estate ads, drove out to find a house and made it happen. In September of 1985, Janalyn and Jim were on the ferry with the moving truck on the way to their new home on Baldwin Road. Janalyn remembered Jim said, “We’ve got to thank them for letting us move here. We’ve got to give back to this community.”

Over the next 20 years, Jim and Janalyn made good on Jim’s pledge. She was active with the League of Women Voters and the Shelter Island Historical Society and he was elected to two terms on the Town Board.

When Jim was diagnosed with cancer, Janalyn and Jim met with Jim’s oncologist. She interrupted the doctor in the middle of polite introductions. “Look is he dead, or does he have a chance?” she asked.

The doctor said yes, he did have a chance. “Then let’s get started,” Janalyn said.Jim died in August of 2005, from a series of complications initiated by a tick bite in the middle of his second term on the Town Board and only weeks after the annual Crescent Beach fireworks show he had organized for 11 years at. At that year’s show he was still fundraising, even in a wheelchair. “Jim was only 63 when he died-way too young,” Janalyn said. “I’m very grateful for all those years. He did a lot for Shelter Island.”

Janalyn continued her own volunteer activities and added new ones in honor of Jim, including the Chamber of Commerce, Deer and Tick Committee and for 20 years now the annual Shelter Island Arts and Crafts Fair, a much-anticipated annual event which she organizes, bringing together local artists and people with the wherewithal to buy their work.

Lately her attention and can-do spirit is trained on the lack of affordable housing on Shelter Island. Her work as a real estate professional makes her more aware of the problem than most people and her work as a builder makes her more able than most to actually do something about it.

When six affordable homes were built in the 1990s and six local families moved in, it was the beginning of the town’s only initiative to make homes for working — but not necessarily wealthy — families on Shelter Island.

Janalyn sees that experiment as a success and it encourages her. “Those families are still here,” she said. “Their houses look great. That’s what I’m trying to do when I build this house. The new four-bedroom house is designed to rent to one family, but it could also work for four individuals. I put a super large kitchen in so everyone could have their own cabinets.”

The house should be ready to occupy this spring.

“People are upset by this house going up, but if they think it’s going to be like a mobile home, well, it’s not,” she said. “I’m following the process, a building permit to a C of O [certificate of occupancy] and all the rest. I’m following the guidelines to build a safe house.”

Janalyn’s way of living is to go and do. “I love life. I hate laziness, excuses, not taking responsibility. I won’t give an excuse,” she said. “I’ll do as much as I can.”

Lightning Round

What do you always have with you? Right now, it’s Nushka.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? My backyard.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Kahala Beach in Hawaii.

When was the last time you were elated? The day I adopted Nushka two months ago. A rainy day, a stinky dog.

What exasperates you? Unkind people.

When was the last time you were afraid? When Reverend Paul Wancura was found.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The day of the Art Show and Craft Fair.

Favorite movie or book? Book — ‘Lord of the Rings.” Movie, — ‘The Wizard of Oz.’

Favorite food? Poi, it’s mashed taro. I like ‘two-finger’ poi, thick enough to eat with two fingers, not as thick as one finger.

05/10/2018

“I have never run into an unlovable meatloaf, but I have loved some better than others.”

– Laurie Colwin “More Home Cooking”

Meatloaf, the comfort food of 1950s America has long been a palette for cooks. Mix whatever ground meats you like, add bread and seasonings, shape it into a loaf, cover with a sauce and cook it. When it meets with approval, name it after yourself.

My mother made a version that relied heavily on tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce. It was so delicious that when she made it for my (future) father, he not only asked her if she would marry him, but waited a year for her to return from studying in France to seal the deal. My sisters and I always ate Cora’s Meatloaf with a volcano of mashed potatoes, the crater full of melting butter.

Meatloaf recipes are a staple of community cookbooks — those compendiums of recipes that have long been created and sold to benefit a good local cause. An important contribution to this genre is “The Shelter Island Historical Society Cookbook,” the 2013 version of which includes a recipe from Phyllis Wallace for making mini-meatloafs that uses oats instead of bread and improves perfection by adding a cup of shredded cheddar cheese to the meat and spices.

James Beard’s meatloaf recipe, (“The James Beard Cookbook,” 1959) went hard on the bacon, with strips lining the entire bottom of the roasting dish and a few more crossed over the top of the loaf. He used ground beef and recommended kneading the mixture with bare hands, an excellent practice that prevents that thing where you find a little cell of hamburger inside your serving of meatloaf because it wasn’t mixed enough.

My contribution to meatloaf making starts with beef and pork and relies heavily on flavorings and spices associated with red-cooked pork, a classic Chinese comfort food. Star anise, which is available at the IGA, has an aromatic cinnamon-meets-fennel taste; soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce provide savory umami flavors, and horseradish — preferably purchased from a North Fork farm stand in the past week or so, is the sweet heat to balance it all.

Charity’s Meatloaf

Serves 4, or double the recipe for leftovers

12 ounces ground beef (chuck)

4 ounces ground pork

1 large onion, diced

Two cloves garlic, crushed and diced

1 large beaten egg

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon grated horseradish

1 star anise pod crushed to a fine powder

1 tablespoon fish sauce

2 tablespoons bread crumbs or panko

½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine or dry white wine

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 slice of bacon

1. Mix the ground beef and ground pork together with a fork. Combine with the minced onion and garlic.

2. Beat the egg in a small bowl and add soy sauce, horseradish, star anise, fish sauce, the bread crumbs, pepper and 1 tablespoon of the wine.

3. Add to the meat and knead the mixture by hand to distribute the seasonings and break up any large lumps of meat.

4. Form the loaf and place it in an oven-proof dish.

5. Mix the remaining tablespoon of wine with oyster sauce. Spread the mixture over the loaf. Drape the bacon over the loaf.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Jack Josephson and Magda Saleh at home near Congdons Creek.

Even if Magda Saleh, Egypt’s first prima ballerina in her 20s and founding director of the Cairo Opera House and National Cultural Center in her 40s, had not placed a large bowl of sweet, salty roasted nuts in front of me, I would not have moved from her living room sofa overlooking Congdons Creek.

It wasn’t the view, which was magnificent. She was relating the story of her life, with bureaucratic intrigue, world political movements and revolution and war as a backdrop. Her husband, Jack Josephson, an Egyptologist and the man who brought her to Shelter Island, was there to add context and avail himself of the peanuts.

Magda told part of her story in an interview on March 13 in the New York Times Magazine and in a 2017 documentary called “A Footnote in Ballet History.” She will appear at the Shelter Island Library Saturday, September 15 at 2 p.m. for a screening and Q&A.

Magda’s mother was Scottish and her Egyptian father was a well-known scholar and educator. The only girl in a large family, Magda grew up and was and educated in Cairo in the 1950s.

Professional dancers in Egypt at the time were called “Oriental” — known also as belly dancers — and their art was considered to be close to prostitution. It was acceptable for little girls to study ballet as part of a well-rounded education, but never with a view to dancing professionally.

When Magda’s father realized she was determined to be a professional ballet dancer, he warned her that it would subject the family to a grave social risk.Egypt’s first minister of culture, Sarwat Okasha, was a hero to Magda then and now. Okasha had been a leader of the Egyptian Revolution and during the years Magda was trained as a ballerina, he was responsible for the establishment of an Egyptian ballet program.

Cairo’s theatrical and musical life was centered on a grand opera house. “People dressed up for the performances held there and became part of the spectacle. We were no strangers to performance,” Magda said. “Cairo was called Paris on the Nile.”

When the Bolshoi performed at the Cairo Opera House, Magda was there and was “just blown away by the virtuosity,” she said. “The ballet master was brought to our ballet class to watch and he called me over and said ‘I have news for you. You have talent, and next year a teacher will be coming from the Bolshoi and I advise you to audition.’”

Magda was invited to enroll in the program and became one of five Egyptian girls chosen to study in Russia, returning to become Egypt’s first prima ballerina, dancing leading roles. Her father attended her performances at the Cairo Opera House and enjoyed being congratulated, telling everyone, “I am Magda’s father.”

In addition to the social risks of a daughter who danced professionally, Magda’s parents worried about the physical stresses of ballet on her young body, a concern that proved prescient. During what would be the last year of Magda’s career as a performer, the Cairo company put on “Don Quixote,” and the short season required her to dance for 13 consecutive performances. “I don’t think any ballerina has done that,” she said. “When I went back to regular training, my leg wouldn’t bend. It just locked.”

She and her partner were scheduled to appear as guest artists with the Bolshoi in Russia and she was determined not to miss the opportunity. In the middle of this catastrophe, Magda heard that the Opera House was on fire. As she stood watching flames destroy the building, she knew any hope of continuing her career in Cairo went with it.

“The Russians invited me to the Black Sea to take the baths, and I made it through that season as guest artist,” she said. “But by the end of the last performance I knew I was done.”

Magda’s most radical act as a woman in Egypt in the late 1960s was a thing she did not do: get married. In a culture where fathers and husbands controlled womens’ lives, she had seen two of her colleagues marry at the insistence of their families and then quit ballet when the demands of family life became too great.

“I wasn’t interested,” she said.

At the time, any unmarried girl was considered risky lest she bring shame on her family, let alone a girl who was a professional dancer. But Magda’s parents supported her wish to remain single.

When suitors began to come around, her father had to entertain them. “At first he’d say, ‘She’s too young.’ And later when he couldn’t get away with that he’d say ‘She’s too busy,’” Magda said.

“That was exceptional. As conflicted as my parents were, they did everything to further my career.”

She left Egypt to study at UCLA when her performing career was over in spite of the fact that Egypt was still firmly in the sphere of Soviet political influence and the U.S. was seen as an enemy. She stayed in the States to complete a PhD at New York University before returning to Egypt in 1983. Magda remembers that period spent studying in the U.S. as “formative and transformative years.”

She became a professor and dean at the Higher Institute of Ballet in Cairo and when Egyptian President Mubarak accepted a $50 million grant from the Japanese government to build a new opera house and cultural center, Magda was asked to become founding director of the new center.

She planned the inaugural ceremonies, lobbied foreign diplomats for support from the international business community, took ambassadors for tours of the site where the center was being built and generated a constant buzz of favorable press.

Within months, she was sacked.

Magda went overnight from being talked up as a candidate for the next cultural minister of Egypt to being out of a job and unwelcome in her own country. “The new minister who invited and subsequently got rid of me may have felt threatened,” Magda said. “It ended very suddenly and I was an exile. I felt I had lost my country and my job.”

Magda had met Jack Josephson in 1978, at the Brooklyn Museum when she and her mother came to the museum looking for research materials to support Magda’s NYU dissertation. At the time Jack was married with children.

But 13 years later, Magda was back in the United States and looking for a job. She called Jack, then six years a widower, and they married in 1993.

“When we were seeing one another we were discreet,” Magda said. “When I finally decided, yes, I’ll get married, the news broke and it went like wildfire that ‘Jack Josephson has gone and married this Egyptian belly dancer.’ I’m afraid I was a bit of a disappointment. I couldn’t even offer them a shimmy.”

“When I married Jack, a whole new world opened up,” Magda said. She decided to leave dance history behind and turn her considerable skills to marriage and Egyptology, serving as an editor for Jack’s writing, which is centered on the art history of early Egypt, particularly sculpture.

Not long after Magda and Jack decided to marry, she began coming to Shelter Island on weekends. Now, 25 years later, they spend as much of their time in the house on Congdons Creek as possible, even though it means seeing friends in the city much less often.

“Peace. It changes you,” Magda said. “Here you can hear the blood tingle in your ears. It cleanses you.”

Three times Jack and Magda have led a group of friends from Shelter Island to Egypt. “We had been blathering about how wonderful Egypt was and we realized that we have a very special privilege in Egypt,” Jack said. “People recognize Magda on the street. I was referred to all around Egypt as ‘Magda’s husband.’”

She continues to serve her country as a cultural diplomat, bringing together exciting Egyptian artists and American audiences. She even brought Egyptian pianist Mohamed Shams to perform for the Shelter Island Friends of Music after arranging for his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall a couple of years ago.

Magda understands better than most people the difficult position of the performer caught between power and art. “So much talent in Egypt and we waste it,” she said. “We are proxies for the powers that are raging above us and we get to be shuffled around.”

Lightning Round — Magda Saleh

What do you always have with you? Photographs of my parents.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? Here. We don’t leave.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? I have two, the Pyramid of Djoser, a step pyramid in the Saqqara necropolis and Seti at Abydos.

What exasperates you? Human obduracy. I saw it in Egypt over the decades … and in the U.S. now. What are we doing and why are we so bent on destroying ourselves?

Favorite book? ’The Lord of the Rings.’ I am fascinated by Tolkien, his imagination, his language and the fascinating world he wove out of whole cloth.Favorite food? Right now, these honey peanuts. I love eating. I am omnivorous.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? Sarwat Okasha. A great son of Egypt.

Most respected elected official? President Obama and his wife Michelle. A remarkable couple

04/25/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO All that’s left of an osprey nest, knocked down by a winter storm.

Last week, I saw an osprey flying in slow circles over the remains of an enormous nest that last summer held a brood of young.

The nest, perched on a thick branch of an aging oak tree, fell into Chase Creek during the third of the four winter storms and now it looks like a pile of kindling.

That fish hawk seemed angry and I can’t blame him. How would you feel if you came back into town after a long vacation in a warm place to find that your home had fallen into the creek during a nor’easter?

The osprey wasn’t the only Shelter Island resident returning to find trouble while he was away.

We like to think of this as a place where there’s not much dirty laundry — fortunately, since we have no laundromat.

But this winter was ugly, with the destruction of dozens of trees, arrests for drunk driving and drugs, a home invasion and a burglary, one resulting in the death of an elderly man, all reminding us that no place is totally safe.

Surveys of Americans on the subject of locking doors show that at least 7 percent of Americans regularly leave the doors to their home unlocked and in the Northeast it may be as high as 22 percent. The likelihood that you lock your door has to do with your age (older people lock less), as well as whether or not you live in a city. Your gender (women lock more) also predicts the likelihood that your door is locked.

The police lock on the front door of the New York apartment that my husband and I moved into in 1982 was the gold standard of security at that time. A three-part device, it consisted of a plate bolted to the door, another embedded in the floor, and a heavy metal rod like a ski pole with a bend at one end that fit into the floor plate and slid with a sound like a guillotine as the door opened and closed.

A police lock could not be picked or jammed, and the only way in was to destroy the entire door, a fact that slowed down fire fighters as well as felons. Fortunately, the one time we had a fire, we had plenty of time to dismantle the police lock from the inside and escape unharmed.

The police lock never got traction on Shelter Island, a refuge where an unlocked home was unremarkable and latchkey kids did not exist because there were no keys. But today, people who lock are edging out the unlocked.

A writer and his wife are self-described “city people” and their introduction to Shelter Island’s no-lock policy will sound familiar to people who didn’t grow up here. “When we closed on our house, we asked the owner for the key,” he told me. “He didn’t have one. He was taken aback that we wanted or thought we needed one. But we persisted, and he had a set made at the hardware store.”

Count them as lockers.

A real estate professional I spoke to is not a locker, but she recalled the time she decided to go on a two-month trip and was gently told by a neighbor that this might be the time to lock her house, and let the police know she would be away. Reluctantly, she took the suggestion telling the policeman,” I’ve been told that I should call you.” The police she said, were glad to keep an eye on the place.

She’s now a reluctant locker.

An Islander I’ll identify as an environmental educator falls into the category of the situational locker, especially when it comes to the family cars. On the Island, they don’t lock cars and even leave the keys to their 20-year old stick shift inside the car on the theory that anyone who got the urge to steal it would have no idea how to drive it.

They only remove the keys from the new car (10 years old) to save them from being accidentally locked inside. Don’t laugh, it happened. “We like to imagine that Shelter Island is a safe, secure place where we can trust people to do the right thing,” she said. “But, yes, the recent [events]are definitely a concern.”

A long-time resident who grew up on Shelter Island, lived away and then returned is one of those who have revised their locking practices.

“I have not been a locker, but I am now and feel both guilty and sad about it. To live on Shelter Island is to live in paradise. I still believe that, but being careful wins over nostalgia.”

I admit that I am now a locker, even if my purpose is to keep good things inside (heat, the dog) more than bad things out. For 25 years, our Shelter Island home was unlocked year-round whether we were here or not, but I used to ride with my sisters in a 1970 Volkswagen bug with no seat belts and I’m not doing that anymore either.

Now I’m into home security, including a smoke and CO detector that sends me a text message when my husband creates clouds of smoke while broiling salmon.

It’s our nest, and even though I know bad things can happen, it makes me feel better to know I’m doing what I can to protect us.

04/06/2018

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO A day in the sun for fathers and sons, like the Diedrich Family.

Published in the Shelter Island Reporter on March 29, 2018

When my husband, two adult sons and I travel to Dunedin, Florida, the spring home of the Toronto Blue Jays every March, we come home improved.

We read, we sit around, we drink beer and we watch baseball. It is the spiritual and culinary highlight of the year, a place where our family can experience baseball as a kind of faith and spring training as a pilgrimage.

I start every day with a bowl of Raisin Bran and skim milk in the Holiday Inn breakfast room with the other guests, many from Canada and New York. This year a delightful Toronto-area family of five — parents, two kids and their grandmother — held the room captive. The son was the kind of talkative 10-year old boy who knows a lot of excellent jokes about flatulence. As he encountered the breakfast bar he paused by the tray of condiments to ask his mother, “Did you know that if you put ketchup packets in the freezer they will explode?”

At the table with his parents, and 14-year old sister, he tucked into a pastry completely coated in some kind of thick, white icing. “Cinnamon buns are my favorite unhealthy thing,” he said. “If you were dying, what would your final meal be? My final meal would be a giant hamburger, sausage and bacon.”

His sister took the bait: “Mine would be baby food because that’s what I started with.”

Mom corrected her, “Actually you started with breast milk, so that would have to be your final meal.”

“Gross,” said Dad, changing the subject.

A coach of his son’s team back home, he led a review of the play they witnessed at a Jays game the previous day that began with a base-running error by Dwight Smith and led to two Blue Jays standing on second base, followed by a rundown and a double play that would have been a triple if the Jays hadn’t already had one out, to end the game. Follow?

Never mind. Dad said, “By that point the whole team was laughing.” As were we.

CHARITY ROBEY PHOTO Mother and child in the Florida sunshine on the berm at Phillies Spectrum stadium.

My husband reminded me that Dwight Smith hit a home run off one of our sons at a tournament in Cobb County, Georgia, back in the days when we saw base-running errors and run downs every day in Little League play.

This year, baseball talk in the breakfast room was sometimes derailed by events of the day. In the corner, near the heated box holding the cinnamon buns, three guys in Phillies T-shirts were consulting Google Maps to devise a strategy for driving to Lakeland while avoiding the worst of the spring break and Disney traffic. The guy with the gray goatee asked his Google-Mapping buddy, “What do you think of the Yankee starters?”

Engrossed in his phone, his companion gasped: “Oh my gosh, he just fired Rex Tillerson.”

Our first game was the Yankees away at the Oriole’s Ed Smith Park in Sarasota. We were delighted to see Aaron Judge had also made the trip, something marquee players rarely do in spring training. It’s said that the great Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera never even had a travel jersey for spring games. But there was Judge, a few yards away in right field, making plays and studying the replay on the Jumbotron, looking to get better, as good as he is.

His agility was even more incredible when I took in his kayak-like feet.

On Friday, we traveled along with the Blue Jays a couple of miles to the Phillies Spectrum field. Jays shortstop Gift Ngoepe, was working hard for his spot on the roster. Ngoepe is the first black African player in Major League Baseball.

The Jays recently added poutine, the Canadian comfort food to their stadium menu.

He played a brilliant shortstop, making several dazzling plays. After the game, fans gathered to observe an alligator floating in a fenced-in storm drain outside the stadium on the way to the parking lot.

By Saturday morning, a new front opened in the Holiday Inn breakfast battle of the bulge when the toaster, mounted on a steep angle to make it easier to grasp and remove the bread, began to pop like a fly ball, with toast landing on the floor several feet away.

“Whose toast is that?” said the breakfast room supervisor.

“Why does it jump like that?” asked the gentleman from Quebec.

Dad from Toronto chimed in, “You have to stand by the toaster and catch it, or it just flies right out.”

The matriarch of the family of five from Arkansas suggested, “You should hand out fielder’s gloves so we can get some practice shagging toast.”

Saturday at Auto Exchange Stadium in Dunedin was the Jays annual game with the Canadian National team, a chance for the most promising 16-to-18-year old Canadian players to brush up against the majors. The Jays starter against the junior team was Marcus Stroman, a Long Island native who identifies home as “Medford, LIE exit 65.” The Jays catcher, Russell Martin a former Yankee, came up through the Canadian National team.

The Jays reached into their roster of young legacy talent to make it a day for fathers and sons. Kacy Clemens (son of seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger) started at first, Cavan Biggio (son of Hall of Famer, Craig) at second, Bo Bichette, (son of Dante) at shortstop and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at third.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s father was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in January, a notorious bad-ball hitter who would swing at anything, so when Vladimir Jr. walked his first time up, his patience prompted a fan to remark that he must have gotten his plate discipline from his mother.

Braden Halladay, son of legendary pitcher Roy Halladay, pitched a perfect 8th inning for the Canadian Junior Team. His impossibly long and elegant pitching stance evoked his father’s, who threw the second no hitter in postseason history and died last year in an airplane crash. Halladay’s performance was an emotional link to his family history, as well as baseball history.